Education reporter

The state’s two public higher education systems are cooperating as never before to build an educated Georgia workforce, the systems’ respective leaders told an Athens audience this week.

“We will meet all the requirements of industries and business that they will have the workforce they need,” said Ron Jackson, commissioner of the Technical College System of Georgia.

Jackson and University System of Georgia Chancellor Hank Huckaby spoke Wednesday morning to a small group of invited education, business and political leaders in a downtown meeting room of Athens Federal Bank & Trust. The pair also addressed a meeting of the Athens Rotary Club later in the day.

Georgia is ramping up to produce more workers with post-secondary degrees, in line with Gov. Nathan Deal’s “Complete College Georgia” goals, Jackson said.

By 2020, the two systems must produce 250,000 more graduates with post-secondary degrees over and above current levels, he said.

“Our workforce has to have post-secondary education to compete not only nationally, but globally,” Jackson said.

That’s not just college diplomas, but technical college training that can be a pathway to high-paying jobs such as welding, he said.

One of Huckaby’s first goals when he became chancellor was to cooperate more with the technical college system, Huckaby said.

An agreement between the two systems now guarantees that the university system’s colleges and universities will award transfer credit for 27 core courses students can take at the state’s technical colleges, and the number is greater at some colleges, Huckaby said. The University of Georgia accepts transfer credit for 80 courses students can take at Athens Technical College, said Athens Tech President Flora Tydings, who also spoke briefly at Wednesday’s gathering.

At the same time the state needs to produce more trained workers, state funding for the two systems was cut drastically after the 2008 recession set in, and the money is not likely to be restored, Huckaby said.

“That’s the real world that we live in,” he said. “That means we have to go to a different model.”

Toward that end, the university system is now evaluating all 22 of its teacher education programs, he said. Administrators are also examining other programs with an eye toward eliminating units that aren’t producing the numbers of graduates they should be turning out, he said.

Online education is another factor in that new model, though exactly how remains to be seen, Huckaby said.

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